Tag Archives: Thai

The Constitutional Court on Thursday accepted a case calling for the party, Thai Raksa Chart, to be dissolved for hostility toward the constitutional monarchy. The accusation reached the court five days after King Maha Vajiralongkorn sunk the party’s shock bid to make his sister a candidate for prime minister. “If parties linked to Thaksin keep being disbanded, the conflict will never end, and will intensify,” said Punchada Sirivunnabood, an associate professor at Mahidol University’s Faculty of Social Sciences and Humanities near Bangkok.

The post follows a political party’s failed bid to make the princess its prime ministerial candidate, after her brother King Maha Vajiralongkorn said it was inappropriate for her to seek office. Thailand officially treats top royals as semi-divine and apolitical. Thai Raksa Chart is linked to exiled former prime minster Thaksin Shinawatra.

Kittiratt Na Ranong, a former finance minister and deputy leader of Pheu Thai — one of several parties backed by Thaksin along with Thai Raksa Chart — said his colleagues are “going forward in full gear” ahead of the March 24 vote. “People across Thailand have been feeling the effect of a bad economy,” he added. Thaksin’s camp is seeking to rally poorer voters who have helped his allies win every election in Thailand since 2001, drawn by policies such as cheap health care and crop price support.

Thai Princess Ubolratana was on Monday formally disqualified for running for prime minister, ending her brief and ill-fated political union with a party allied to the powerful Shinawatra clan, just days after a stern royal command rebuking her candidacy was issued by her brother, the king. Uncertainty and conjecture have coursed through Thailand since Friday when the Thai Raksa Chart party made the explosive announcement of Princess Ubolratana, King Maha Vajiralongkorn’s elder sister, as their candidate for premier after the March 24 election. A royal command from the king put a pin in her unprecedented political aspirations, insisting the monarchy was above politics and describing his sister’s candidacy as “highly inappropriate”.

BANGKOK (AP) — Australia's foreign minister praised Thailand for its handling of a young Saudi woman who fled her family to seek asylum in Australia, but also reminded it of continuing concern about a Bahraini soccer player granted asylum in Australia who remains in Thai detention.

BANGKOK (AP) — Thailand's immigration police chief met Tuesday with officials from the Saudi Embassy in Bangkok, as Saudi Arabia tried to distance itself from accusations that it attempted to block a young woman's effort to flee from her family and seek asylum abroad.

The Saudi woman who made a desperate plea for asylum after landing at Bangkok airport has been placed “under the care” of the United Nations refugee agency, a Thai official said late Monday. Rahaf Mohammed al-Qunun told AFP she ran away from her family while travelling in Kuwait because they subjected her to physical and psychological abuse. The 18-year-old said she had planned to seek asylum in Australia and feared she would be killed if repatriated by Thai immigration officials who stopped her during transit on Sunday.